Are Censorship Groups Going Broke Faster Than Adult Retailers?

Latest beggars include Focus on the Family and Family Research Council

By Mark Kernes

Sep 19th, 2011 04:46 PM

JESUSLAND—Focus on the Family, the pro-censorship group founded by Dr. James Dobson, announced on Saturday that it is eliminating 49 more jobs due to declining donations. The organization now employs just 650 people—less than half the number it employed at the height of its "popularity" in 2002: 1,400.

Still, according to the Denver Post, the Colorado Springs-based company expects to receive contributions of between $90 million and $95 million for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, which falls short of its projected $105 million budget for the current year.

"Long ago I suppose there was a time when we had fat to trim, but we've moved through that to muscle, sinew, bone—and now we're scraping out marrow," Focus VP Gary Schneeberger said.

Perhaps forseeing the revenue decline attendant to religiously conservative Republicans no longer controlling the U.S. presidency, Dobson himself left the organization in 2009 to found a new group, Family Talk, which produces a daily conservative radio broadcast/podcast similar to the one Dobson used to do for Focus. One recent show, "Bringing Up Girls-Puberty 1," asked, "Parents, do you sometimes feel inadequate when trying to figure out the best way to handle the walking bundle of emotions in the house called your 'teenage daughter'?" Focus continues to provide similar broadcasts with a variety of hosts.

Also fast losing contributors due to the Republican-caused "Great Recession" is Family Research Council (FRC), the fundamentalist anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-gay-rights, anti-Obama, anti-church/state-separation, anti-tax, anti-stem-cell-research, anti-immigrant, anti-Social-Security, anti-public-education (etc.) group which sent out a fundraising email today asking, "How much of your money and of your family's freedom to live, worship, and raise children and define marriage should Washington be allowed to claim and control?"

Their answer (as if you couldn't have guessed): "As little as necessary!"

In order to accomplish that agenda, however, the group is asking for $1.8 million in last-minute contributions to shore up company coffers before that magic date, Sept. 30, which we assume is the end of FRC's fiscal year—and also one week before the group's big yearly religio-conservative conference, the Values Voter Summit, scheduled for Oct. 7-9.

"I could mention scores of issues on which your FRC team is a leader on TV, the Internet, and behind the scenes in Washington, DC," wrote FRC president Tony Perkins. "But influencing public debate like this is costly for FRC. Our staff of 65 dedicated policy experts, pro-family advocates, and grassroots mobilizers labor long and hard every day. ... Without adequate funding, we do less, say less, and accomplish less."

What these two groups, and the similarly situated Morality in Media, don't seem to understand is that the very policies they support—limited government, tax cuts for the rich, destruction of the social safety net, free rein for big corporations, banks and Wall Street traders—are exactly the factors which are impoverishing their grassroots supporters, whose incomes have decreased precipitously over the past three or four years to the point where, although they may be inclined to support the organizations' agenda, if it's a choice between donating and putting food on the table, buying their (now more expensive) health insurance or keeping a roof over their heads, guess who loses?